1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems for classifying lists of telephone numbers into categories and more particularly to an automated system for classifying lists of telephone numbers based on the different audible sounds received when each telephone number is called.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Over the years, the telephone has become a vital tool for use in sales, conducting surveys, canvassing and political promotion. Different types of outbound calling systems and telephone notification services have been developed to utilize customer registries and other contact lists for these purposes. The most successful systems employ live contact between a caller and a callee. Accordingly, lists of telephone numbers are typically supplied to a database within the system for use by the callers. However, the database of telephone numbers is often times plagued by telephone numbers that are no longer in service, temporarily disconnected, or no longer valid for one of a number of different reasons. As the callers place calls to each of the telephone numbers on the database, those numbers that are not valid or do not fit their intended purpose are discarded from the contact database. Callers either attempt to manually determine the validity of the discarded number or permanently discard them from their database, wasting valuable time and money.
Accordingly, what is needed is an automated system for classifying lists of telephone numbers into a plurality of predetermined categories so that databases of telephone numbers can be easily and accurately updated and efficiently used.